No. 706



Philosophía, love to think, to be wise.




EDITORIAL:

Frank Martin. 

*** Alfabetizadores; 40 años de historia.

Y la nuestra comienza 


Cuba, La Brigada Benítez.

** Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Bush’s “big lie” and the crisis of American imperialism. 

** Terrorism and the origins of Israel—Part 1 

By Jean Shaoul. 

22/06/03

Frank Martin
World Data Service

Gran asamblea en Guaraguao de ciudadanos "Contra el golpismo en Pdvsa" Por: Venpres Publicado el Domingo, 22/06/03 01:14am				imprímelo mándaselo a tus panas

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Bush’s “big lie” and the crisis of American imperialism

By the editorial board
21 June 2003

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More than two months after the US occupation of Baghdad, and three months after the onset of the American invasion, the Bush administration has been unable to produce any evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. It is increasingly obvious that the entire basis on which the White House and the American media “sold” the war was a lie.

In the months leading up to the war, Bush warned repeatedly that unless the United States invaded Iraq and “disarmed Saddam Hussein,” the Iraqi leader would supply terrorists with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons to use against the American people. He cited this allegedly imminent threat as the reason for rejecting international law and unleashing the US war machine against a half-starved, impoverished country that has been under economic blockade for more than a decade.

That these claims have proven to be lies hardly comes as a surprise. Even before the conquest of Iraq, the US charges were widely rejected around the world. No government in Europe or the Middle East regarded Iraq as a serious military threat. The UN weapons inspectors had been unable to locate any WMD after months of highly intrusive inspections. Tens of millions of people—the supposed targets of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—marched in the streets of cities on every continent to denounce the US decision to launch an unprovoked war of aggression.

While US war propagandists presented the attack on Iraq as an extension of the “war on terrorism,” it is well known that the Bush administration had drawn up plans to use military force to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. September 11 was seized on as a pretext for stampeding public opinion to accept US military intervention.

The charge that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was selected , as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz later admitted, for “bureaucratic reasons”—i.e., it was the one allegation that the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA all agreed could provide a serviceable cover for the real motives: seizing vast oil resources and establishing US dominance of the Middle East.

Since the war began, however, every element of the Bush administration campaign on weapons of mass destruction has been shown to be false.

* The claim that Iraq has sought uranium from Niger, in west Africa—this proved to based on forged documents and was exposed as a lie nearly a year before Bush included the charge in his 2003 State of the Union address.

* The claim that thousands of aluminum tubes imported by Iraq could be used in centrifuges to create enriched uranium—debunked by the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as by American nuclear scientists.

* The claim that Iraq had up to 20 long-range Scud missiles, prohibited under UN sanctions—no such rockets have been found, nor were any fired during the military conflict.

* The claim that Iraq had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, including nerve gas, anthrax and botulinum toxin—nothing has been found, despite searches at hundreds of sites targeted before the war by US intelligence reports.

* The claim that Saddam Hussein had issued chemical weapons to front-line troops who would use them when US forces crossed into Iraq—no such weapons were used and none were found when the Iraqi military collapsed under the weight of the US assault.

The Bush administration was reduced to citing the discovery of two tractor trailers near Mosul as proof that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons labs—a charge that featured prominently in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5. But no trace of a biological agent was found on the trucks, and the White House has been compelled to backtrack even on this threadbare claim, suggesting that the trucks may be evidence of a weapons “program,” not of weapons themselves.

It is necessary to reiterate, in the face of ongoing attempts by the Bush administration and its media apologists to rewrite history, that Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction was the principal reason given for the US drive to war. The congressional resolution last October which gave Bush the authority to launch the war, UN Security Council Resolution 1441, and the war resolution adopted by the British Parliament at the behest of Prime Minister Tony Blair, all centered on the dangers of Iraq’s alleged arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, and its active efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

There were repeated, explicit claims by US government officials, not only that Iraq was in possession of huge quantities of chemical and biological weapons, in violation of UN resolutions, but that US intelligence agencies had pinpointed the precise locations where these weapons were stored, the identities of those involved in their production, even the military orders issued by Saddam Hussein for their use in the event of war.

There were dozens of such statements, of which only a few need be cited here:

August 26, 2002—Vice President Dick Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

September 18, 2002—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons—including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.”

October 7, 2002—President Bush declared in a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”

January 7, 2003—Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing, “There’s no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons.” This certainty was based on contemporary intelligence, he said, not the fact that Iraq had used chemical weapons in the 1980s.

January 9, 2003—White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, “We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”

February 8, 2003—Bush said in his weekly radio address: “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”

March 16, 2003—Cheney declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to Saddam Hussein, “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

March 17, 2003—In his final prewar ultimatum, Bush declared, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

March 30, 2003—On ABC’s “This Week” program, 10 days into the war, Rumsfeld reiterated the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, adding, “We know where they are.”

Democratic and Republican congressmen and media commentators have described the Bush administration’s actions as exaggeration, hype or embellishment, or at most undue pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to produce a compelling “case” against Iraq. All such descriptions are an evasion of the real issue: the Bush administration deliberately lied to the American people and to the world, concocting reasons for war in order to justify aggression against a sovereign state. Not since Hitler and the Nazis dressed up storm troopers as Polish soldiers and staged “attacks” on German positions in 1939 has there been such a flagrant and cynical effort to manufacture a casus belli.

It is important to recall the context in which the “weapons of mass destruction” campaign unfolded. Mass protests throughout the world had demonstrated as the New York Times admitted at the time, that there were “two superpowers—the United States government and world public opinion,” which were diametrically opposed to one another.

The Bush administration faced unprecedented opposition on the UN Security Council, and threats of veto by France, Russia and China, while UN weapons inspectors, in a series of reports to the Security Council, found no evidence that Iraq possessed either banned weapons or the production facilities to make them.

The campaign of lies about weapons of mass destruction was required to overcome the impact this worldwide opposition was having on US public opinion. This campaign was aided by the complicity of the American media and Democratic Party politicians, who knew that administration spokesmen were lying, but refused to say so publicly.

The Bush administration employs a definite methodology: truth is what you say it is, and events have no objective consequences. So long as it can deploy the resources of the federal government and the corporate-controlled media to reinforce its version of events, bombarding masses of people with propaganda images and drowning out any alternative explanation, the right-wing clique that dominates in Washington believes it can get away with the most Orwellian of deceptions.

This method, saturated with contempt for the American people and their democratic right to control public policy, goes back to the origins of this administration. Bush claimed an electoral mandate for an ultra-right agenda, despite running as a “compassionate conservative”—the advertising slogan employed to cloak his real program in moderate garb—and despite losing the popular vote and entering the White House thanks to the intervention of the right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court.

In his domestic policies, Bush lies on a monumental scale: tax cuts for the rich are a “jobs program”; cuts in Medicare and Medicaid are “reforms”; slashing spending on public education is repackaged as “no child left behind”; the establishment of the legal framework of a police state is the defense of “freedom” against terrorism.

There is another gross deception: the claim that the Bush administration and US intelligence agencies had no information that would have enabled them to prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks, or respond to the hijackings once they were under way.

The administration blocked any serious investigation of September 11, despite a mass of evidence that US intelligence agencies were warned in advance of the coming terrorist attacks and had many of those involved under surveillance, but did not take elementary measures that could have prevented the murder of nearly 3,000 people.

At the same time, it used the tragedy as a pretext for setting into motion a far-right agenda of political repression and war—an agenda that had been prepared well in advance.

The preferred methods of the Bush administration are to suppress and censor information, smear its critics as traitors and accomplices of terrorism, and, when all else fails, brazen things out by piling new lies upon the old. Thus the exposure of the WMD fabrication against Iraq has been followed by the concoction of similar but even more far-fetched charges against Iran.

There is no precedent in American history for the sheer scale of falsification engaged in by the Bush administration, the Republican Party and their media chorus. The “credibility gap” of the Vietnam War era is nothing compared to the lie machine of the current government.

Lying on such a scale has a definite impact on the body politic. It contributes to the destruction of any political connection between the working people, the vast majority, and the ruling clique. The masses become alienated from the regime, while the regime loses any ability to understand the intensifying social antagonisms building up underneath its feet. Contradiction is piled upon contradiction, and the conditions created for social and political eruptions.

Despite the delusions of the White House, events do have consequences. It has taken only a few weeks for the conquest and occupation of Iraq to reveal itself as a bloody colonial enterprise. Here again, the administration responds with lies—pretending the mass opposition of the Iraqi people to American occupation is nothing more than isolated “pockets of resistance” or the work of “Saddam Hussein loyalists.”

The unprecedented international antiwar movement in advance of the invasion is another objective event with vast consequences, although Bush sneered at the protests, saying he would not decide policy based on a “focus group.” Mass opposition to the US occupation of Iraq will revive within the United States and internationally and millions will raise the demand for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and all of the Middle East and Central Asia.

One argument recently advanced by media and political apologists is that the Bush administration could not be lying about weapons of mass destruction because that would require a vast conspiracy, including the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Congress and the previous Clinton administration, directed against the American people.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair put this case most crudely, declaring that no one could believe that he and Bush had deliberately fabricated a pretext for war because that would be “too gross.” Republican Senator John McCain asked whether critics of the war disbelieved “every major intelligence service on earth, generations of UN inspectors, three US presidents and five secretaries of defense.”

That is a fair description of the international campaign against Iraq spearheaded by the United States, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, throughout the 1990s. The specter of weapons of mass destruction was used for an entire decade as an all-purpose excuse for maintaining the blockade of Iraq, preserving the no-fly zones and otherwise subverting Iraqi sovereignty.

During the Clinton years, Iraq was repeatedly required to prove a negative—to demonstrate the absence of such weapons throughout its territory—and every failure to achieve this inherently impossible task was used to continue the starvation of the Iraqi people, at the cost of more than a million lives. Now the Bush administration makes use of the crimes of the Clinton administration against the Iraqi people to justify even greater crimes.

None of the Democratic congressional leaders or presidential candidates dares to indict the Bush administration for dragging the American people into war on the basis of lies. In some cases (Congressman Richard Gephardt, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Senator Hillary Clinton) they are directly complicit in the lies. In others, sheer political cowardice in the face of attack from the extreme right plays a major role (Senator Tom Daschle).

Still others (Senators Robert Graham and Carl Levin) criticize the White House out of concern that the exposure of Bush’s lies over Iraq will make it more difficult to win public support for the next American war, against Iran, North Korea or some other target. But whatever their criticisms of White House tactics, on the fundamental issue of the defense of American imperialism, both big business parties are united.

The American media parroted uncritically the claims by the Bush administration that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had close ties to the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and that US military action in the Middle East was in retaliation for the September 11 attacks.

The media has always served as an instrument of big business, but there has been a qualitative deterioration over the past 30 years. During the Vietnam War, there was considerable critical reporting—at least in the war’s later stages—as the credibility of government claims of impending victory were called into question by events. Leading US media outlets published the Pentagon Papers and exposed the Watergate scandal.

Over the last decade, in particular, the media has prostrated itself before every provocation by the right wing, portraying the Whitewater investigation and Lewinsky affair as a legitimate exposure of wrongdoing in the Clinton White House, legitimizing the theft of the 2000 presidential election, accepting without question the portrayal of September 11 as a bolt from the blue that could not have been anticipated by the Bush administration, and now endorsing the conquest of Iraq.

Such formerly liberal organs as the New York Times may whip themselves over such peccadilloes as the Jayson Blair affair—in which a junior Times reporter fabricated quotes and incidental details of many stories—but they have no qualms in collaborating with the Pentagon and CIA to fabricate the pretext for a war in which tens of thousands have died.

A remarkable opinion poll was published recently, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. It found that one third of the American public believed that American military forces had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Some 22 percent said that Iraq had actually used chemical or biological weapons in the war. Other polls have reported that some 50 percent of those questioned believed Iraqi citizens participated in the September 11 attacks, while 40 percent believed that Saddam Hussein directly assisted the hijack-bombers.

Such findings are an indictment of the role of the American media in systematically misinforming and confusing the American people. But they also demonstrate that the supposedly widespread public support for the war in Iraq rests on sand.

The process of media manipulation has definite limits. Like the Bush administration, the media has discredited itself in the eyes of tens of millions of people, who recognize that both government spokesmen and their media counterparts lie without scruple or limit.

The supreme role of the lie in US politics reflects not simply the cynicism of the media, but rather the enormity of the social contradictions within America. The United States is the most deeply class-divided of all the industrial nations. It is a country whose social relations—dominated by vast disparities of wealth—are increasingly antithetical to any form of democracy, and instead conform to rule by a financial oligarchy.

It is impossible for the ruling class to give an honest accounting for a system that heaps up riches for the privileged few, while driving down the living standards of the vast majority of the population. These social tensions are leading inexorably to major political upheavals.

The exposure of the Bush administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction has already had a colossal impact overseas, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair is being openly accused of lying to Parliament and the British people. The reaction in the United States is less visible, in large measure because of the collapse of liberalism and the absence of any even remotely critical stance either in the media or the Democratic Party. There is mass popular opposition to the Bush administration’s policies, and genuine outrage over the war in Iraq, but this finds no expression in any section of the mass media or political establishment.

Sooner rather than later, however, the contradictions of American imperialism must find a political outlet. As the situation in Iraq deteriorates, the other basic lie of the war, the claim that the US would replace Saddam Hussein with a democratic regime, is being thoroughly exposed.

The US occupation regime has already begun to engage in measures—provocative searches of Iraqi neighborhoods, shooting down unarmed demonstrators, suppression of planned elections—characteristic of a military dictatorship. The number one priority of the occupiers is to restart Iraq’s oil industry and carry out its privatization, so that the country’s oil wealth can be looted by American corporations.

The claims of “weapons of mass destruction” and “war for democracy” will come back to haunt the Bush administration and the entire US political establishment that embraced the war. The political impact is already being seen among the troops on the ground in Iraq, who have begun to express disillusionment with the invasion and opposition to continued occupation of a country whose people clearly want them to leave.

All of the institutions of the American ruling elite are implicated in crimes of staggering dimensions—the White House, the Congress, the judiciary, the military, the media, the corporate aristocracy. Any significant movement from below will produce a crisis not only of a president or administration, but of an entire social order.

Terrorism and the origins of Israel—Part 1

By Jean Shaoul
21 June 2003

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The following is the first of a two-part series. The concluding part will be published June 23.

Last month the National Archives, formerly known as the Public Record Office, released MI5 Security Service files showing that Zionist terror groups planned to set up cells in London and assassinate the post-war Labour government’s British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

“Present Trends in Palestine”, an MI5 briefing paper written in August 1946, reported on the activities of the Stern Gang. This was the terrorist group that had assassinated Lord Moyne, the British military governor in Egypt in 1944.

“In recent months it has been reported that they [the Stern Gang] have been training selected members for the purpose of proceeding overseas and assassinating a prominent British personality—special reference having been made several times to Mr. Bevin in this connection,” the paper noted.

One of the leading lights of the Stern Group, which had by this time renamed itself Lehi, was Yitzhak Shamir who became prime minister in 1983 and whose tenure in the highest office in Israel was second only to Ben Gurion.

Another paper, “Threatened Jewish Activity in the United Kingdom, Palestine and Elsewhere”, prepared for the Prime Minister Clement Attlee, focused on the activities of the Irgun.

It noted that the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin—later to become prime minister of Israel in 1977—who had a £2,000 price on his head, “was responsible in the past for the liquidation of members of the police and the military whose activities have been judged especially worthy of Jewish resentment in Palestine.”

The paper was written in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing by the Irgun that had in the previous month blown up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people—Britons, Arabs and Jews—and injured many more.

It said, “Our Jerusalem representative has since received information that the Irgun and Stern Group have decided to send 5 ‘cells’ to London to work along IRA [Irish Republican Army] lines. To use their own words, the terrorists intend ‘to beat the dog in his own kennel’. If the 18 Sternists are executed [for their part in the King David bombing] the Irgun have agreed to co-operate with the Stern Group.”

The intelligence forces believed that if the executions were carried out, there would be at least 100 retaliatory terrorist outrages and “indiscriminate shooting of British officers and soldiers on the streets of Palestine must be expected”. The files showed that the sentences were in fact reduced to life imprisonment.

A briefing note prepared for a meeting between the prime minister and the head of MI5, Peter Sillitoe, also listed precautionary measures to be taken to combat terrorism. Police would monitor Jewish groups in Britain and spy on “Jews known to have expressed sympathy with terrorist activity in Palestine, and who might be a point of contact for any terrorist arriving in this country. All applications for UK visas in the Middle East are scrutinised by local security authorities. Immigration officers at UK ports report to Home Office, Special Branch and MI5 the particulars of all Jews, including seamen, arriving from the Middle East.”

The fact that MI5 claimed it was keeping a close watch “through its own sources” on UK Zionist groups with sympathy for the terrorists suggests that they had informers working for them inside. Given the British propensity to use such groups for its own purposes to divide and rule, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that MI5 had agents provocateurs working within them.

While it has long been known that these Zionist groups carried out or planned to carry out assassinations, bombings and sabotage against British targets, these papers—released so long after the normal 30-year rule—are important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the papers provide a timely reminder that the Zionists of all political colours used terrorist methods to achieve statehood—something that present-day Zionists seem to have forgotten when they talk about refusing to negotiate with the Palestinians whom they routinely refer to as “terrorists”.

It is not simply that Ariel Sharon and company are a bunch of hypocrites or political amnesiacs about the past. More importantly, the Irgun, led by Menahem Begin, the Stern Group and Lehi, its successor, went on to form the Herut party, forerunner of the Likud party, and the ultra right-wing Moledet party, which form the main coalition partners of the Sharon’s government. The gang of former generals, ultra-nationalists and religious bigots that run Israel today are the political heirs of terrorists who furthermore had close connections with the fascists. In this, they mirrored some of the Arab nationalists in Palestine, Egypt and Iraq who allied themselves with Germany in order to rid themselves of British imperialism. These alliances led to a virtual civil war between the various wings of the Zionist movement during World War II.

The various Zionist terrorist groups emerged out of the far right wing of the Revisionist Zionist movement, an ultra-nationalist Zionist group. While all the Zionist groups sought to stifle the rising tide of class struggle in Palestine in the name of national unity, the Revisionists openly stated at the very beginning of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict, in opposition to the mainstream political Zionist movement, that the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine was impossible without violence and the forcible transfer of the indigenous population. The Zionist state could only be established “in blood and fire”. They opposed the division of Palestine in 1922 whereby Britain had ceded what is now Jordan to its client, the Hashemite emir Abdullah, as a reward for his support during World War I. While the Labour Zionists orientated towards the Western democracies, the Revisionists’ political ideology had more in common with the fascist dictators of Europe.

By the late 1930s, the British, who ruled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, began to reverse their previous and somewhat vague support for the establishment for “a homeland for the Jews” in Palestine. Menachem Begin, a leading member of the Betar, a far right Revisionist group, regarded military action against the British as both inevitable and necessary to secure a Jewish state in Palestine and the East Bank of the Jordan.

As the situation in Eastern Europe grew ever more desperate for the Jews, and the British sought to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to gain support from the Arabs in the coming war against Germany, Betar joined forces with the Irgun—the National Military Organisation, the Revisionists’ military wing. With no prospect of a Jewish state in sight, they argued that armed struggle against the British was the only way forward.

In 1939, when war broke out between Britain and Germany, Avraham Stern, one of the leaders of the Irgun, who had studied in Italy and was an admirer of Mussolini, rejected any support for the British against Germany. He argued that the British were the main enemy. There was no difference between the Nazi-fascist states and the Western democracies, between communists and social democrats, between Hitler and Chamberlain, or between Dachau and Buchenwald and closing Palestine off to the Jews. When he failed to persuade the majority of the Irgun to support him, he broke with the Revisionist movement and his faction became known as the Stern Group.

While both the mainstream Zionists and the Revisionists supported the British against Germany and joined the British armed forces, the Stern Group opposed conscription of the Jews and went on to carry out armed robberies, murders, and terrorist attacks against both the British and the Arabs. It waged a campaign of terror aimed at driving out the British and establishing a Jewish state on the entire land of biblical Palestine, including Transjordan. With the Jews a minority in Palestine, such a state would necessarily mean expelling the Arab population to ensure its Jewish character.

In his support for the enemy of the British, Stern turned a blind eye to the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. The Stern Group’s policies and actions were opposed and condemned by the overwhelming majority of Jews in Palestine.

In return for help from first the Italians and later the Germans in driving the British out of Palestine, Stern promised that the new Jewish state would become a German client state while Jerusalem, with the exception of the Jewish holy places, would become a province of the Vatican. In other words, the establishment of a Jewish state took precedence over the safety of European Jewry. His group had meetings with the Nazi regime’s representatives and tried to recruit 40,000 Jews from occupied Europe to invade Palestine and defeat the British. But the Germans had no more wish to alienate the Arabs and lose the chance of gaining access to the region’s oil resources than the British and dismissed the offer.

The British shot and killed Stern in February 1942 and imprisoned his immediate coterie, including Yitzhak Shamir, the future prime minister.

As the war drew to a close, Stern’s followers, including Shamir on his release from jail, regrouped as the Lehi with similar aims, including Stern’s “Eighteen Principles of National Renewal” that proclaimed a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates. They adopted the methods of the IRA in its struggles against the British. Shamir even used Michael as his nom de guerre, after Michael Collins. The now embarrassing Nazi-fascist affiliation was dropped in favour of Britain’s latest enemy, the Soviet Union, although some advocated an alliance with the Arab national liberation movements that opposed the stooge regimes imposed by British imperialism.

Lehi denounced the Labour Zionists and the mainstream Revisionist movement for relying upon negotiations with the British. As far as Lehi was concerned, the British were the Gestapo and the Labour Zionists were akin to Vichy Europe, and Lehi were the resistance. Asked if it was possible to achieve national liberation through terrorism, Lehi’s response was, “The answer is no! If the question is, are terrorist activities useful for the progress of revolution and liberation, the answer is yes.”

Lehi’s most notorious action was the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British military commander in Egypt in 1944.

According to Shindler, a fellow in Israeli Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author of The Land Beyond Promise: Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, Lehi copied the methods of the IRA. Between September 1942 and July 1946, when Shamir was arrested and exiled to Eritrea, there were seven assassination attempts on the life of the British High Commissioner in Palestine and several more were planned, including Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary and members of British intelligence forces. It was Shamir who planned the assassination of Lord Moyne. Lehi also carried out 14 assassination attempts against Jews who worked or were believed to work for British intelligence. It was not averse to killing its own members if the need arose.

While Lehi was by far the smallest of the Zionist terrorist groups, the Stern/Lehi group carried out 71 percent of all political assassinations between 1940 and 1948. Nearly half of these were against fellow Jews.

Even after the establishment of the Zionist state, Lehi continued its murderous activities. Hazit Ha’Moledet, the Fatherland Front, a Lehi splinter group that later formed the Moledet party, carried out the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, a UN envoy seeking to arrange a peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs.

To be continued

Alfabetizadores; 40 años de historia.

Y la nuestra comienza 


Cuba, La Brigada Benítez

En 1961, uno de los recuerdos que atesoro de mi niñez, fue ver a miles 
de jóvenes Cubanos Alfabetizadores de la Brigada Conrado Benítez, en 
interminables filas con sus morrales sobre el piso en el Lobby del Hotel 
Habana Libre en Cuba. Para un niño de tan corta edad, todo siempre 
parece ser muy grande. Era yo tan solo un pequeño visitante Venezolano 
en un país en donde mujeres y hombres de la estirpe Gulliver, eran 
saludados como héroes con afecto, respeto y admiración de la gente. 
Madres, novias, familiares despedían a sus seres queridos que partían a 
una gran meta. Eran soldados del conocimiento, sin armas que no fuesen 
las letras y el más profundo espíritu revolucionario. No recuerdo otro 
momento más emotivo que ese.

Todavía resuenan en mi mente sus consignas y cantos:

Estudio, trabajo, fusil.
Lápiz, cartilla, manual.
Alfabetizar, alfabetizar.
¡Venceremos!

 Era el himno de la alfabetización del cual mi memoria no se acuerda 
……….Pero recuerdo amargamente que muchos de esos muchachos que conocí, 
no regresaron jamás a sus casas, porque fueron muertos por fuerzas 
mercenarias contrarrevolucionarias, luego derrotadas definitivamente en 
Playa Girón.
El primero de enero de 1961, la Revolución Cubana proclama el Año de la 
Educación y cien mil jóvenes Alfabetizadores se dispersan por los campos 
y montañas de la isla. En las cartillas de alfabetización, algunos 
jóvenes llevan el poema "Elogio de un poeta a su isla antillana" (1949), 
de Ernesto Víctor Matute:
¿Cuánto vale tu isla?
 Pues mira para los que nacimos en ella
casi no vale nada...
...Traigo mi Isla debajo del brazo
y a nadie se la entrego
¡Quién ha visto que un hombre con orgullo quiera vender un cocodrilo verde!

Nadie los pudo detener, para lograr ser el primer país Latinoamericano 
sin analfabetismo, en más de 500 años de historia. La Campaña de la 
Alfabetización que protagonizó el pueblo de Cuba en el año 1961 no es, 
de ninguna manera, un hecho casual llevado a cabo por la Revolución, ni 
se gestó la idea en un momento de reflexión después del triunfo 
revolucionario de enero de 1959; mucho menos podemos considerarla como 
una medida surgida espontáneamente al calor de la lucha diaria de la 
dirección de la Revolución por sacar a Cuba de la miseria y el atraso en 
que la tuvo sumergida durante más de cincuenta años de República 
Neocolonial. Aquella guerra contra la ignorancia en la que un ejército 
de pueblo fue el principal protagonista durante casi un año de lucha sin 
cuartel y sacrificio sin límites; aquella gesta sin paralelo ni 
antecedentes en la historia de los pueblos, formaba parte de una de las 
leyes y medidas que los jóvenes de la Generación del Centenario había 
concebido como programa del movimiento revolucionario que encabezado por 
Fidel Castro se lanzó a la lucha contra el gobierno tiránico de 
Fulgencio Batista el 26 de Julio de 1953.
Plasmar en unas pocas líneas toda la grandeza de la épica batalla que 
libró el pueblo de Cuba para erradicar el flagelo del analfabetismo en 
menos de un año de titánico esfuerzo, es prácticamente imposible.

Nicaragua, Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización
Veinte años después, en 1983, vi partir a muchos amigos de la 
Universidad que acudieron al llamado de la junta de reconstrucción de 
Nicaragua. Ya hombre y socorrista de la Cruz Roja Internacional, recibía 
semanalmente las cartas en los hospitales móviles de mi amiga Claudia, 
contándome sus andanzas por un país en ruinas por la guerra. Claudia era 
una de las alfabetizadotas Venezolanas en la Cruzada Nacional de 
Alfabetización en Nicaragua. Un buen día sus cartas dejaron de llegar. 
Luego supe que en la afueras de Managua había sido encontrada muerta 
colgada de un garfio de carnicería asesinada por los contras somocistas. 
Hoy en día, una calle de Managua lleva su nombre. Por supuesto como 
parte sustancial de ese esfuerzo y de esos logros hay que recordar las 
59 bajas sufridas, 40 por accidente, diez por muerte natural y nueve 
asesinados por las bandas contrarrevolucionarias. Toda tarea nacional 
heroica se hace con la vida de patriotas destacados.
Los ejes de participación y movilización tuvieron como es natural 
múltiples manifestaciones, desde la movilización de unos sesenta mil 
Alfabetizadores al inicio y final de la Cruzada, utilizando en cada una 
de ellas unos cien autobuses, doscientos camiones, lanchas, mulas, etc., 
hasta el manejo de los medios de comunicación principalmente la radio en 
dos emisiones diarias de 15 minutos cada una en cadena nacional.
A este respecto cabe destacar los maestros que se hicieron presentes de 
Cuba, España, República Dominicana, Perú y Costa Rica, así como 
Alfabetizadores provenientes de grupos de solidaridad de 19 países. El 
costo total de la Cruzada se calculó en unos doce millones de dólares.
Todo este esfuerzo integrado por múltiples elementos de decisión 
política, planificación, organización, orientación pedagógica, recursos 
humanos, económicos y materiales así como por el arduo trabajo de casi 
cien mil nicaragüenses, durante cinco meses, culminó con 406,056 
nicaragüenses alfabetizados y 42,639 a punto de hacerlo, reduciendo la 
tasa nacional de analfabetismo de 50.3 a 12.9 por ciento.

Considerada la CNA como el hecho de mayor trascendencia en la historia 
cultural y educativa de Nicaragua: el acontecimiento que después de la 
guerra de liberación constituyó el aprendizaje más trascendental que 
tuvo el pueblo Nicaragüense.

Sólo a partir de esa óptica podemos entender cómo es posible la 
realización de una Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización que pone en 
"estado de educación" a todo un país, que moviliza toda una nación para 
lograr aniquilar el problema social del analfabetismo, herencia de la 
dictadura somocista.

La voluntad política del gobierno revolucionario y el FSLN, la 
experiencia insurreccional popular y un pueblo consciente y organizado, 
constituyó una nueva realidad que sirvió de soporte y energía para 
experimentar, crear y trasformar los procesos educativos que vayan 
acercando al nacimiento de hombre nuevo. La Cruzada Nacional de 
Alfabetización fue matriz de la nueva educación.

Podemos afirmar que la CNA no es un hecho aislado ni un proyecto 
terminal, sino que fue una respuesta global desde donde se comenzaron 
las transformaciones educativas en Nicaragua. Los principios básicos que 
cruzaron ese gran proyecto educativo y siguen cruzando todos los 
procesos educativos, pueden sintetizarse en los siguientes puntos:

-    Participación y movilización popular.
-    Ligazón a la realidad nacional, concreta y dinámica.
-    Intereses del pueblo como punto de partida y de llegada.
-    Metodología dialéctica que permite vincular la educación con la 
problemática socio política y económica con la vida diaria, con la 
producción, con la defensa.
La Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización constituyó una respuesta 
estratégica a un problema, a una necesidad igualmente estratégica de la 
Revolución Popular Sandinista. Precisamente es a partir de un pueblo 
consciente que haya sido introducido dentro del conocimiento y dominio 
de las habilidades y capacidades de la lecto-escritura, y en general 
dentro del sistema educativo, que pueden impulsar todo el desarrollo del 
proceso educativo e ir formando en el tiempo los recursos humanos que 
van a hacer posible su desarrollo.
Una de las características que distinguen a la Cruzada Nacional de 
Alfabetización es el hecho de considerarla como un hecho político con 
implicaciones pedagógicas. Además de su vinculación con el proceso 
productivo y cultural, la alfabetización implicó un hecho político 
porque significó el acceso al manejo de un código social determinante, 
el lenguaje escrito, y la entrega de instrumentos que permitieron leer y 
analizar objetivamente la realidad, el método científico.

Venezuela, Misión Robinson, Plan Nacional de Alfabetización.
Cuarenta años después de aquel encuentro con los Alfabetizadores 
Cubanos, en el Lobby de un hotel en Caracas, me vuelvo a encontrar con 
Jóvenes Alfabetizadores organizándose para salir a diferentes zonas del 
país. Esta ves sin penas ni glorias, sin cantos ni consignas, por lo 
cual me pregunto si los Venezolanos estamos consientes de la importancia 
del proceso que acabamos de iniciar. La Alfabetización es el proyecto 
más hermoso y motivador que un país puede emprender. Aquí reflexiono y 
pienso que algo no está en su lugar en nuestro gobierno y será el pueblo 
Venezolano quien defina este proceso construyéndolo desde abajo con el 
liderazgo del Presidente Hugo Chávez.
Pido perdón  a nuestros Voluntarios Venezolanos, pues pienso que no se 
les esta dando el lugar que debemos, cuando son los parteros de un sueño 
de Libertad. Pido disculpas a nuestros hermanos Cubanos, por algunos 
compatriotas que en su ignorancia no han entendido aun la nobleza de 
ayudarnos en esta tarea. 
Las Revoluciones son generacionales y esta Bolivariana es la que nos ha 
tocado vivenciar. Dada la gran responsabilidad histórica que ahora 
asumimos, es necesario hacer algunas reflexiones para empezar este 
capitulo que aun está en el tintero y que apenas esta semana se empieza 
a escribir:
La Alfabetización rompe definitivamente el divorcio entre educación y 
realidad y la dicotomía educación vida concreta. En efecto, cambia 
totalmente el contenido de la educación anterior, para dar un nuevo 
elemento: la realidad sociopolítica. La realidad nacional se convierte 
en la gran "asignatura" que se debe enseñar y aprender en la alfabetización.
La Alfabetización significa la primera concreción de este principio 
educativo, tendiente a acabar la separación entre estudio trabajo. Esta 
grandiosa tarea educativa esta aunada con el plan de reactivación 
económica y en su desarrollo, los trabajadores se convierten en 
estudiantes y miles de estudiantes se vincularán con el trabajo 
productivo de las comunidades. La Alfabetización no es un proceso 
añadido o paralelo a la Revolución, sino que surge de la naturaleza 
misma de la Revolución Bolivariana. Por consiguiente, la alfabetización, 
en su contenido, en su metodología y en su organización, es la 
continuación y la consolidación de la Revolución Bolivariana; tiene por 
lo tanto, el mismo carácter Popular y democrático que definen al proceso 
de cambios: La participación popular.
   
En primer lugar, la Alfabetización y la Educación Básica de Adultos, que 
de ella nace, son democráticas y populares porque con ellas el pueblo 
conquista el derecho a la educación que le ha sido negado por siglos. 
Cientos de miles de Venezolanos aprenderán a leer y a escribir, 
expresión y consolidación del carácter democrático y popular del proceso 
de cambios.

En segundo lugar, tiene el carácter popular y democrático de la 
Revolución por la participación de las masas en su realización. La 
democracia popular revolucionaria se genera y desarrolla cuando el 
pueblo es el protagonista del proceso revolucionario, a través de las 
organizaciones de masas. La alfabetización se lleva adelante con base en 
este gran principio estratégico. Es el pueblo el que alfabetiza y educa 
al pueblo, a través de sus organizaciones populares, convocadas y 
dirigidas por el voluntariado revolucionario, lo que equivale a decir 
que al pueblo se le asigna el papel de sujeto de su propia educación.
Son las masas populares las que educan a las masas populares, a través 
de sus organizaciones y en función de un proyecto que expresa sus 
propios intereses. Esto hace que los niveles de democracia de la 
Revolución Bolivariana se realicen y fortalezcan en el mismo proceso de 
alfabetización y educación popular básica, ya que no se puede organizar 
un proyecto educativo más democrático que aquel que se hace descansar 
sobre las organizaciones de base.

    En este proceso de cambios, la educación no es sólo un derecho; es 
también un deber de todo Bolivariano. La educación se convierte en tarea 
de todos, en un deber de cada Venezolano, en una tarea de cada 
organización de masas. La educación deja de ser, por lo tanto, una tarea 
propia de maestros titulados y se busca que el pueblo sea verdaderamente 
educador/educando en un proceso de enseñanza/ aprendizaje.

    A partir del Plan Nacional de Alfabetización, las organizaciones 
populares se perfilan
como el canal principal de la dinámica de educación popular. En la 
Venezuela Bolivariana debe evidenciarse que la educación popular no es 
una actividad restringida, propia de algunos especialistas en técnicas 
pedagógicas, sino una actividad natural de las propias masas, como una 
actividad inherente al proceso de consolidación del poder popular, como 
una tarea revolucionaria democrática, en la que es el pueblo el que 
educa al pueblo.

    Finalmente, las organizaciones populares se fortalecen en el proceso 
mismo de alfabetización y educación popular. El Plan Nacional de 
Alfabetización será una fuente permanente de nuevos dirigentes para las 
organizaciones de masas y de formación de las mismas. En la realización 
de esta tarea y como resultado de la misma, las organizaciones populares 
crecerán y consolidaran cuantitativa y cualitativamente; se fortalece el 
poder popular y por lo mismo el carácter popular y democrático del 
proyecto Bolivariano.

La Misión Robinson impulsa una educación colectiva y comunitaria. La 
educación se convierte en un hecho comunitario y colectivo: se educa en 
la comunidad y para la comunidad. Este hecho se materializa en el método 
mismo de la educación, al constituirse el grupo y no el individuo 
aislado, en la unidad educativa básica y al hacer del diálogo el 
instrumento básico de la educación. Si por un lado se afirma que el 
alfabetizando es el sujeto principal de su propia educación, por otro se 
subraya que es un sujeto colectivo. Los círculos Bolivarianos y 
Zamoranos, las cooperativas, las organizaciones populares y cuanta forma 
de organización en etapa de post alfabetización, se constituirán en 
unidades educativas básicas en donde se aprende discutiendo, 
reflexionando críticamente en grupo sobre la realidad concreta y sobre 
la práctica colectiva, con el fin de trasformar dicha realidad y 
enriquecer dicha práctica. Es el grupo el que discute los propios 
problemas y analiza la realidad y conjuntamente busca las salidas y 
soluciones posibles. Muy dentro del concepto del conversatorio Vecinal 
del que nos habla el Prf. Arenas.

Esto no obedece simplemente a una innovación pedagógica formal de querer 
introducir una simple dinámica de grupo en la educación, sino que 
responde a una exigencia del carácter comunitario de la educación que 
supera el carácter individualista de la educación tradicional. La 
educación es un hecho comunitario: la persona no se realiza como persona 
individual sino en la comunidad y en el colectivo. Por eso el grupo, el 
colectivo, llega a ser un factor fundamental de la nueva educación.

Roberto Moreno Rodríguez
entropía@cantv.net

-- 
René C. Baralt M.
email: rbaralt2002@cantv.net
       rbaralt@yvkemundial.com.ve
Linux counter: 187744
Linux machine: 132518
Tlf: 58 414 3347401
Maracaibo, Edo. Zulia, Venezuela





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